Christopher Stapleton practices Eye Surgery in a Munich laboratory to gain a first hand experience of high-performance experts.

A Decade of Deep Dive Research in Human Experience & Imagination

As we have waited for the long anticipated arrival of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality into the mainstream markets, Simiosys has been taking as many deep dives into the human experience as possible. According to Christopher Stapleton, the innovation of Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) goes far beyond the present novelties that we see in the news. Every application of VR is teaching us something new, from passing time to seeking thrills; from performing surgery to rehabilitating from surgery; from urban combat to a soldier’s cognitive therapy; from a student learning to teaching training; from marketing to shopping.

The human experience is quite extreme and varied across the spectrum of life. Virtuality will be augmenting each and everyone of these applications differently. Simiosys is discovering how this will impact the future in its Real World Laboratories embedded into commercial, civic and academic institutions worldwide.

How can you simulate eye surgery with Virtual Reality, if you haven’t ever done it for real? The photo above shows Christopher Stapleton performing eye surgery with the latest microscopic optical equipment at the Munich Technical University (TUM) Computer Aided Medical Procedure (CAMP) lab (Figure 1). He is helping invent the future of medical imaging and computer interfaces. As a Research Director and Theme Park Designer he brings unique experience and training to help develop the most compelling interfaces mixing reality with virtuality and the imagination. “Medical Imaging is just another form of storytelling to convey a compelling image of the patient’s health. Now storytelling engages all senses, in all directions and dimensions across all realities.”

With his 35 year career in creating extreme experiences, he can identify problems and opportunities of emerging technology and techniques to reach the optimum human performance. More importantly, he can understand the requirements that a robots will need to learn with advance Augmented Intelligence (AI) to replace many of the tasks done by humans. This will reinvent many professional practices and eliminate even more jobs than any other technology. However, it will create as many new jobs as it eliminates.

However, these new jobs are designed for what he calls the “Virtual Native,” those who grew up with Virtual Reality in the home. They will be making so many creative leaps with technology that will make what we see as futuristic look like a thing of the past. “The applications we are seeing in the news today, were explored in the 1990’s. What we are seeing now, is the past catch up with the present. In the future, the Virtual Native will see reality, virtuality and the imagination as one world and an extension of themselves and abilities.